


Matter

by Tierfal



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist
Genre: Angst, Canon: Fullmetal Alchemist the Movie: Conqueror of Shamballa, M/M, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-06
Updated: 2012-07-06
Packaged: 2017-11-09 07:54:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/453118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tierfal/pseuds/Tierfal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ed always asks too much.</p><p>[Major spoilers for 2003 series/Conqueror of Shamballa.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Matter

“Hey, Alfons,” Ed says one night. He’s lying on the bed with his left arm folded behind his head, the right one angled out to the side.

At the desk, Alfons pauses in the struggle to convince his tired eyes to keep reading. There’s just not enough time.

Ed looks at the ceiling. “Do you believe in God?”

It’s funny how often Ed doesn’t know what he’s asking.

Alfons didn’t hesitate to invite him to stay when they discovered that his father had disappeared without a trace, but Ed didn’t know what he was asking when the arrangement stopped being ‘temporary’. Alfons freely offered access to all of the little that he has, but Ed didn’t know what he was asking when the backache coaxed him off of the cot and into Alfons’s narrow bed. Alfons feels comfortable with Edward Elric in a way he never has with anyone else, and he’s willing to tell Ed almost anything, but tonight, as always, Ed doesn’t know what he’s asking.

He’s asking a dead man about God.

Alfons looks across the breakfast table every morning at an individual who, half-invisible, with one foot planted in a different world, is twice as radiant as any other person he has ever met. Alfons lies in that narrow bed every night with his hands clenched at his sides, or clasped under the pillow, or folded on his chest over his ruined lungs, fighting the urge to reach out and touch before he loses the chance. Alfons would give anything, anything he has left, for someone to trust, to blame, to hold, to cry on, to scream at—for someone to believe in. For someone who would believe in him.

“No,” he says. “I think human beings assign significance to events because… well, we crave meaning, and patterns, and reasoning. But there isn’t a reason. Things happen. Events occur. We’re all just matter, Ed—matter in motion. We’re atoms and trajectories. Anything can happen; no one’s in control. Kind of like when you drive, actually.”

Ed doesn’t take the bait. “But there must be some things science can’t explain. Concrete science, I mean.”

 _Your science_ , he used to say, and then he fell in love with it just as Alfons did so many years ago. Apparently anything Alfons falls in love with will slowly destroy him.

“Science explains everything,” he says. “But it never justifies its explanations. Science is always right, but it’s never fair.”

Ed shifts, pushing himself up on his good elbow, golden eyes narrowed and alight.

“Alfons,” he says slowly, “are you okay?”

He doesn’t know what he’s asking.

“I’m fine,” Alfons says, and he focuses on the book again. There’s just not enough _time_.


End file.
